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How ethics shape the policy preferences of environmental scientists: What we can learn from Lomborg and his critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Peter J. Balint
Peter J. Balint*
Affiliation:
Department of Public and International Affairs and Department of Environmental Science and Policy Robinson A216 George Mason University 4400 University Drive, 3F4 Fairfax, VA 22030 USA [email protected]
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Abstract

Some environmental ethicists have proposed that different environmental values lead in principle to different environmental policy preferences. The controversy provoked by Bjørn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), has provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis in practice for scientists and other technical experts. In analyzing the language of the argument between Lomborg and his critics, I find that environmental scientists participating prominently in the debate fall into one of two camps according to whether their valuations of nature tend to be anthropocentric or nonanthropocentric. I find further that for these scientists moral philosophies correlate both with policy preferences and with interpretations of data. I conclude that unexplored differences in environmental values make important and underappreciated contributions to the politicization of science and to polarization among scientists and other technical experts involved in environmental disputes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 14 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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